Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Maria Tedesco). Here’s an excerpt:
The San Juan National Forest is receiving $5 million to restore forest health on 3,000 acres of high-risk fireshed near homes outside Durango. The Wildfire Risk Reduction and Restoration Project will mechanically treat 3,000 acres of forest in the San Juan National Forest, enabling an additional 9,000 acres of future prescribed fire treatment. This project is located between Falls Creek and Durango Hills subdivisions, which are northwest and northeast of Durango, respectively. The treatment will be done in areas where the forest meets homes, called “wildland-urban interface,” said District Ranger for the Columbine ranger district of the SJNF Nick Glidden. The treatment ranges from thinning the trees out so fires spread slower to mechanical brush mastication, which is mulching of vegetation using heavy equipment. The funding is a part of a larger investment from the Biden administration to prepare forests for wildfires…
This project is important because healthy forest fires restore the forest by cleaning up dead material in the forest and increasing soil nutrients, Glidden said. In the past, the USFS has focused on fire suppression. Now, the agency’s wildfire crisis strategy places an emphasis on restoration by reducing the available fuels…On the SJNF, fire managers are striving to work with what they call “good fire.” Pat Seekins, fuels program manager for the SJNF told The Durango Herald last year that the SJNF needs “30,000 to 40,000 acres of prescribed fire” annually to restore lands. Glidden said this number would allow the forest to catch up to full restoration, but the USFS is prioritizing areas that are close to homes with this newly funded project. To put the funding in context, the USFS burned 9,528 acres in the SJNF from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023.